God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth." Genesis 9:17In any children’s Bible or collection of Bible stories you will find a version of the story of Noah’s ark. Young children are often given an ark to play with – complete with animals that can be paired up, and be put into the ark, and figures of Noah and his family. There’s even a camp song or Vacation Bible School song about this: “The Lord said to Noah there’s goin’ be a floody, floody…get those children out of the muddy, muddy; children of the Lord.” So when we think about Noah’s Ark, these are most likely the images that come to mind, the way we understand the story.And yet here it – at the front end of Lent, alongside Mark’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, just prior to starting his public ministry; not exactly a simple and cute pairing. So what is the meaning of Noah and the Ark, and why are we hearing it now? If you were to take out the brown Bible in your pew and take a look at Genesis, right at the beginning of the Bible, you’d find Noah’s story beginning in chapter six and lasting for four chapters. In the world of the Bible, one story covering four chapters is taking up a lot of real estate. That tells us that for the ancient Hebrews who recorded this passage after centuries of remembering and telling it as part of worship, communal memory, and around the night-times fires of the nomadic tribe, it was very important. The story clearly conveyed to them something about God, humankind, and the rest of creation that was central to their understanding of the universe.We have only the very last bit of the account, so to recap: after the creation of the world and men and women, after humankind had been expelled from the Garden, after Cain slew his brother Abel, after the spread of families and tribes, God that the evil of humanity could not be contained, so God decided to start the whole project over again. But God kept a remnant of the previous creation – Noah, his wife, and sons, and daughters-in-law were to build a ship, an ark, that would contain two of every kind of animal – including the unclean ones, such as bats, camels, eagles, ferrets, frogs, hares, mice, hawks, owls, to name just a few – and of course pigs. They were all to come into the ark, to be preserved from the great flood. Genesis describes that the waters flooded the earth for forty days; and then for another hundred and fifty days the ark was still floating. Finally, “God remembered Noah, and all the beasts and cattle that were with him in the ark;” and the wind began to blow back the waters, and the rain stopped and the floods receded, but that took one hundred and fifty days. And the ark came to rest upon a mountain top, and it was another three months before the tops of the mountains could be seen. More time passed and Noah sent out a dove to see if the land had fully emerged from the waters, but the dove returned; there was no place to alight or to nest. Two more times Noah sent out the dove: first, she returned with an olive branch, and a week later she was gone for good, so Noah knew it was safe for his family and the animals to emerge. Now adding up days and weeks and months in this story and coming up with a specific number is not fruitful; the Bible is not interested in exact chronology. What matters here is that creation in microcosm was locked up, secure, safe, for a long time – long enough for what remained of the previous world to be wiped out. And we know from storms like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy what devastation water can create.When it was all over, Noah, his family, and the creatures, emerged onto dry land, and Noah built an altar and worshiped God. And God made a covenant with Noah – a sacred agreement and promise that God would never again destroy the entire earth by flood. And the sign of that covenant, God said, would be the rainbow; literally hanging up the bow, the ancient weapon of warfare, in the clouds. It was a promise to humankind and all creation that God was done with this kind of destruction. For better or worse, God and his creation (including human beings) were going to be in it together for the long haul, no matter how much sin and evil was in the world.So the story has a happy ending…sort of. When Noah and his family stepped out onto the earth, the landscape must have been pretty bleak. We know what the Jersey shore was like after Hurricane Sandy. We know what it was like around here after Sandy, with all of the trees toppled and torn up. Friends who lived on the Gulf Coast during Hurricane Katrina and survived its ravages have told me that all the trees were stripped bare by the salt water, and even though the day after the storm was beautiful, warm and clear, it seemed like winter in late August, and they felt that the world would never be right again. But long about November the live oak trees began to send out new little shoots; spring was coming even before Christmas, and they took it as a sign that life would slowly return, and they could look forward with hope.Our lives are like that too, sometimes. We go though difficult or painful circumstances, personally or with our families. Or we suffer losses – maybe a job, a business, a home, maybe with our health. Or we look at the world around us and see how much has changed in our society and our culture, and for the church, and perhaps we feel that the challenges we face are too much, too difficult in a landscape that is so radically altered from the one in which most of us grew up and came to expect. Life looks bleak, and we don’t know where we can find hope.We are like Noah, stepping out into strange and unsure territory. Life is to begin again, but how, and what will it take to make it happen? The promise that God made to Noah still holds true: the earth and its people will be held in God’s providential care. Life in all its fullness will return, and flourish, but it will be different. Because of God’s promise, we can have hope – not optimism, but hope – that spiritual reality which says that we, too, are invited into God’s generous goodness; not because we earned or deserved it, but because it is God’s nature to want us to be close and connected to him.And that is what Lent is about – knowing that despite all of our sins and shortcomings, that God wants us to be close to him, and connected. God offers us hope: the hope of new life in Christ; the hope that he is still at work in his world - saving it, blessing it, drawing its people closer to him and to each other; the hope that our lives matter, even if the cultural, spiritual and emotional landscape are very different.We look back to Genesis and we see the sign of the rainbow. It was the promise given after the after the Flood, but in truth was present right from the beginning of creation, when God said “Let there be light”; the promise of the rainbow spectrum encapsulated in the very first moment of light, and hope. And we look forward and see the sign of the Cross, that symbol which was darkness and pain and suffering beyond all measure; yet it was transformed by the death and resurrection of Jesus to be the means and the sign of new life and of hope, from here to eternity. All this Jesus did for us, so that God’s goodness and life could be available to us once and for all, a future of hope. Signs of promise, lives of hope, staying close and connected to the generous God of all creation, even in the midst of a new and strange landscape… that is the meaning and purpose of Lent and our lives of faith.Let us pray.“God, of your goodness, give me yourself; for you are enough for me, and if I ask anything less, I would ever be in want, for only in you have I all. Amen.” ~ Julian of Norwich

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white. Mark 9:2-3a

This has been the weekend of love…Valentine’s weekend. While the primary understanding of Valentine’s Day is that it is a day to spend with one’s sweetheart, celebrating each other and your relationship, long ago Hallmark cashed in on the idea that Valentine cards could be sent to anyone you care about – mother, father, child, sibling, friend, neighbor, cousin; and I think that’s just about right. Everyone needs love in their life, whether it is romantic love or not. When we are loved we are seen for who we really are, and valued, appreciated, understood, held in at least a metaphorical embrace that says – “You are special, valuable, you matter to me.” That experience of being loved makes us shine – not just in the eyes of the one loving us, but in our own eyes as well.

Today we are winding down the Season after Epiphany. Six weeks ago we heard the story of Jesus’ baptism, and the experience he had of the Holy Spirit hovering over him, and the voice of God saying: “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well-pleased.” And now today we hear God reprising that same message. Jesus has taken Peter, James and John up on the mountain to pray. They have what must have been an amazing spiritual experience; Mark, in his usual condensed way, says merely that Jesus was transfigured before them – a dazzling whiteness. And then Moses and Elijah make an appearance – a moment beyond time, outside of the here and now. Finally, after a bit of a scramble on Peter’s part to memorialize or preserve the moment, they hear God’s voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” What had been an experience private to Jesus at his baptism has now also been revealed to his inner circle. Jesus is the Beloved, and he shines with that love – the Father’s love for him, and his love for the disciples, the rest of the world, and all of us.

All through these last six weeks we have seen Jesus manifested as the Christ, the Messiah, God’s Son, the Beloved, in a variety of different ways and from different angles. That’s because God’s love is so great, so deep, so high, so strong, that we cannot fathom the whole of it. And so we get glimpses, peeking around the corner, hoping to get a greater understanding; until today, when we get the Transfiguration full out. Divine love has so infused Jesus that he shines with a brightness from beyond human comprehension, and yet is not undone by it. No wonder Peter thought it was an amazing experience, and should be recorded somehow for posterity.Now, you may not readily be able to think of a time when you had such an experience; this must have been pretty overwhelming. But I think more of us have transforming moments than we let on, experiences of God that are beyond anything we expected or could have manufactured. And truthfully, that is the aim of our worship and our prayer; not for the experience’s sake, but to know ourselves to be in the presence of God’s holiness, and to be moved and changed by that presence. We seek God’s powerful love, so that we can be changed into more of God’s image, so that we can shine with the Spirit of love and be a light to the world around us.

And so God speaks to the small group on the mountain: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” When we have a moving spiritual experience, we are to savor it, but not keep it to ourselves, not let it end there. We are also to listen to what Jesus says, to hear his teaching, to let his words shape our life and our actions, just as we let his divine love shine in our hearts and in our minds.Sometimes when we’ve had this sort of direct experience of God we find it hard to talk about; perhaps we think no one will listen to us if we try to tell them, or maybe they will laugh at us, or think we are crazy or strange, or maybe we struggle to find the words that will convey what we have felt and seen and heard. But stuffing these experiences away doesn’t help; we just sit with them bottled up inside us, and God can’t use the impact of those experiences to help us change our lives or the world around us. It is like receiving an envelope with a red heart on the outside, but never opening it, leaving the Valentine message inside.

What, then, do we do? Tell a friend, or spouse, someone close to you, whose spiritual wisdom you trust, and in the telling, see if the experience doesn’t reach to new levels in your spirit and soul. Sit quietly, and see if a particular prayer you know, or passage of Scripture, or even a word, or phrase of a hymn comes to mind. Pray, and ask God to help you understand your experience, go back to the passage of Scripture, or the hymn or prayer (if you can) and see if that larger context is speaking to your particular situation or need, and ask God what it is that he wants you to see and hear. Ask him to help you listen to Jesus.

Most likely what you will hear or see or comprehend will not be a full set of directions about what to do next in your life, or how to solve problems you may have. Instead, the Holy Spirit wants to give you wisdom, and insight, and understanding – wants to saturate your being with the love of God, and then help you to live that in tangible ways at work, at home, in your volunteering, in your friendships, as a parent, or spouse or child. God also wants us to be vehicles of love in the more complex structures of society and culture, knowing that there is no human endeavor outside of God’s interest and care, or beyond the Spirit’s reach.

So, keep your eyes open, and the ears of your heart attuned to listening for God to be at work in you and through you. Sit with these experiences when they come; let them soak into you so that you may absorb every bit of God’s shining love that you can; and then yourself be changed – from the inside out – so that your life may become more God-shaped, more Christ-centered, ready to hoist the sail of your heart and let the Spirit blow you where God wants you to go.

Let us pray.“Create in me, Gracious Lord, a spirit that is patient and kind. Keep me from all envy, boasting, arrogance, or rudeness; give me true wisdom and understanding, that I may always rejoice in the truth and never in wrong-doing. Strengthen my trust in you so that I can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. Through your strong leading and my own feeble effort, let me mature and grow from the childish to the adult. You, Lord Jesus, are love; make me to be more like you. Grant that your love may be my word and my wisdom, my great offering, and my one accomplishment; for of all things, love is the greatest and it never comes to an end. Amen.” ~ St. Augustine’s Prayer Book

In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. Mark 1:35

We’ve all had those days or those weeks where nothing seems to go right. All the things that we had planned just did not pan out. Sometimes there were things we could have done better, mistakes that we made; sometimes the day just began to unravel, and we were powerless to stop it. It’s that feeling of watching an accident happen in slow motion. When we have days or weeks like this we often feel like we’ve unraveled, like we have begun to disintegrate into little pieces. When we feel this way it is very hard to make wise decisions, act with kindness, show love and respect towards others – including ourselves. And when we have a string of weeks, or months, or even years like this we can forget who we are; we lose ourselves, as fragments of what we value, or who we know ourselves to be, seem to skitter away beyond our grasp.

Now, I don’t want to be too depressing here, but no one is immune from having events in life take pieces out of them, whether that is a momentary experience or a more long-term prospect. This isn’t just an emotional or a psychological issue that we can re-frame with an attitude adjustment. The disintegration of our identity is a spiritual problem. We get battered by life, and sometimes we forget who we are, whose we are, and what our purpose is.

The Gospel passage today gives us some examples of losing identity (or heading in that direction), and then being restored. The first part of the passage presents Peter’s mother-in-law. We don’t know her name, or anything about her, other than she was sick in bed with a fever. And of course in the days before penicillin and other antibiotics a fever could be very serious, even life-threatening. Jesus arrives at Peter and Andrew’s house, along with James and John, having just been at the synagogue where Jesus taught publicly for the first time, and had a run-in with a man who was possessed by a demon. Right away members of the household tell Jesus about Peter’s mother-in-law, and he goes to her, and heals her. And she, in turn, serves them; not because she was grateful (although I’m sure she was), but because it was a sign of her being restored to herself, and her role in the household. She was offering hospitality to guests - a very serious and important business in the ancient Middle East – and her ability to do so was part of her identity and dignity.

Word of this got out pretty quickly, along with the news that Jesus had also healed the possessed man in the synagogue that morning, and by evening when everyone’s work day was finished the neighbors and the townsfolk brought to Peter’s door a huge swath of their family and friends who needed some kind of healing. And Jesus healed them. He restored them to health, well-being, in some cases to their rightful minds, enabling these people to return to their places in the families, their work, their community life.Then Mark tells us that the next morning, very early, Jesus got up and went off by himself to pray. We don’t know exactly what he prayed, although there are set, specific morning prayers in Judaism. They include thanksgiving for the new day, psalms of praise, the canticle that the Israelites sang after crossing the Red Sea and being freed from slavery in Egypt, as well as a recitation of the Shema: Hear O Israel, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. No doubt Jesus prayed these every morning; and added to that was his own prayer and meditation, a connection with God that was necessary for him to maintain strength, clarity, peace, composure – restored to a fullness of his identity and mission. It would be too easy, after the kind of day that Jesus had, where everyone wanted a piece of him, to feel pulled apart, unsure, lulled into a sense of being so needed there in that place that he might be tempted to stay put, and not press ahead with what he knew to be the purpose ahead of him. Jesus goes off to pray so that he does not lose himself and his purpose.

That is so easy to do – to lose our self, and our purpose, and our connection to God – as I outlined just a bit earlier. And so much of the world around us send us messages that what defines us is what we wear, or what we buy, or how many hours we over-work, or whether we have the right hair, or body shape, or whether our child has a winning season on his or her sports team or what college he or she gets into. In short, we let the world define us by measures that are external to us, that don’t take into account character, faithfulness, fidelity, love, kindness, or mercy. Two weeks ago when Bishop Beckwith was here he mentioned how often we Christians fall into “functional atheism” – going through life saying we believe in God, but then acting on our own, without relying on God’s power and wisdom.

To depend on God is risky, and counter-cultural. If we depend on God then we have to acknowledge that we are not in charge, that our lives belong to someone else, and that Someone has a purpose for us that may not always match up with the plans we have made. To depend on God is counter-cultural because it says that we are not complete and perfect within ourselves, that we are not free agents, invincible. And yet the paradox of faith says that when we depend on the mercy and love and grace and wisdom of God, then we will know ourselves most fully, we will discover depths of our identity that we could not know otherwise. Faith lets us know that our identity and value are God-given, rather than something our culture assigns us, or something we have to struggle to achieve ourselves.

One of the clearest signs of our dependence, and most important resources in life, is prayer. Prayer is a way of collecting up all the fragments of our self, and putting them in God’s hands. Prayer is both the words we say and sitting or standing or walking or running deeply in God’s presence – allowing ourselves to “be” before God without any need to justify or explain ourselves. Another way to think about the kind of prayer that helps to integrate body and soul is to think of it like sunbathing – a very welcome prospect in the middle of winter! When we sunbathe we stretch out and lie in the sun, enjoying the warmth on our bodies, the feeling of being completely relaxed and at peace. Prayer can be like that, letting God’s love and mercy and wisdom and peace wash over us -- S-o-n bathing. And we emerge from this sort of prayer feeling renewed, restored, more whole than when we started. We remember that who we are – beloved children of God, followers of Jesus, members of the Body of Christ. And we remember that we belong to God, we were bought with a price; and that our purpose is to love and serve the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

In your prayer during this coming week, may you know the power and the strength of God’s presence and connection, as Isaiah described so beautifully: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. ~ Isaiah 40:28-31. Amen.